Ian Stewart: Between the (Stat) Lines

Navigating the Draft Day waters is difficult. Few managers have the skill and foresight to assure they get a quality starter at every position, maximizing their team's output while minimizing its weaknesses.

Your team's success this season will be largely due to how you handle the limited depth at third base.

Once you get past the sure producers, guys like Alex Rodriguez, Evan Longoria, David Wright, Ryan Zimmerman, Mark Reynolds, Pablo Sandoval, and Kevin Youkilis, there's a steep drop off to the next tier of talent.

Those seven sure things all have ADPs of 40 or better (according to couchmanagers.com), so they're going early.

If you're in a 12-team league, or even a 10-team league, you need to be careful if you're approaching round four and you haven't grabbed your third baseman yet.

So who should you target? Let's take a look at the candidates:

PLAYER

ADP

R

AVG

HR

RBI

SB

Proj. PSR

Ramirez, Aramis

54.4

76

.292

26

97

2

3.69

Figgins, Chone

55.3

97

.287

5

51

37

4.07

Young, Michael

69.3

88

.299

16

80

8

3.36

Beckham, Gordon

85.2

93

.288

21

96

10

4.49

Jones, Chipper

99.9

78

.296

21

78

3

2.81

Tejada, Miguel

112.6

84

.299

18

91

4

3.41

Cantu, Jorge

120.7

67

.277

18

87

2

1.68

Stewart, Ian

127.2

77

.255

24

76

8

2.18

DeRosa, Mark

132.8

76

.260

17

71

3

0.91

All stats are projections courtesy of Bill James Projections.Players are sorted according to their ADP with their projected PSR in the last column (check out our PSR Rankings Explained page if you have no clue what this is).

Note: Because PSR takes into account league averages and no league average has been calculated for 2010 yet, these Projected PSRs are based on last season's league averages. That means the PSR values you see here are very accurate but not absolutely perfect. For the purpose of this discussion, they'll be more than adequate.

The players we see here are being drafted over a wide range of rounds from the sixth (Ramirez) to the 14th (DeRosa). Also, with the exceptions of Beckham and Stewart, they're veteran players with stable career trends, the only knocks on whom are their injury concerns (mainly Ramirez and Jones).

This brings us back to the question at hand. If you missed one of the top seven (or even if you got one of them and are just looking for a backup), who are the best players to target in this group?

ADP is a huge part of this discussion because if you are choosing between two similar players and they have vastly different ADPs, the question on who to take really isn't a question at all.

We see this occur with Young and Tejada. Both players have nearly identical PSRs and are actually projected to perform almost identically across the board, but Tejada has an ADP over 40 picks later. In comparison to Young, this makes Tejada a great value pick.

But Tejada isn't my favorite player in this group. That honor belongs to Ian Stewart.

With a Projected PSR of only 2.18, Stewart certainly doesn't jump out at you. If all of these players performed according to the Bill James Projections, he wouldn't be anything special, but this is one instance where the projections are wrong.

Popular opinion among fantasy owners is that Stewart provides a good power option in the mid-to-late rounds, but he'll never have the batting average to be given serious starting consideration. Anyone who thinks this hasn't looked closely enough at the numbers:

Stewart had his best production batting sixth last season, actually managing a respectable 46/.277/16/45/5 in only 58 games. Given Garrett Atkins' relocation to Baltimore and Stewart's assumed development, he should see much more time at this spot in the lineup than he did in '09.

While he's only a career .238 hitter in the Majors, did you know he batted .293 in 2297 career minor league AB?

You also probably didn't know he posted a line of 92/.319/30/101/19 in 131 minor league games in 2004.

Sure, that great season was ages ago when Stewart was only playing at class A, but he actually carried a .300+ average all the way to AAA, batting .304 in 112 games in 2007. In 2008 at AAA, he batted .280 with 19 HR, 57 RBI and 7 SB in only 69 games.

Believe it or not, that's the kind of production we'll be seeing from Stewart in 2010. No, he probably won't hit 40 HR, but I'm seeing a .270+ AVG and 30+ HR. Do I have anything to back this up? Of course I do. This is Baseball Professor, after all.

BABIP, LD% and Other Metrics

Stewart batted only .228 last season, but his BABIP was just .275. In his other two Major League seasons, Stewart posted BABIPs of .320 ('07) and .364 ('08), so even if those are a bit high, we can see that .275 is a bit low. His 2009 BABIP was probably depressed due to his LD%, which fell to 14.1 percent (his previous career low was 19.2%).

Interestingly, the drop in line drive frequency almost solely resulted in an increase in ground ball frequency. Stewart's GB% rose from 31.4 percent to 40.2 percent whereas his FB% only rose from 43.6 percent to 45.7 percent.

He also saw an increase in his HR/FB rate for the second straight season, up to 18.8 percent from 13.3 percent. Because Stewart has shown a steady increase over his three Major League seasons and demonstrated good HR numbers in the minors, the 5.5 point jump isn't unexpected.

Plate Discipline

Stewart has also been showing improved plate discipline ever since he made it to the Big Leagues. His O-Swing% (percent of pitches he swings at outside the strike zone) has fallen for three straight seasons (35.6%, 28.5%, 22.0%), and as a result his first-pitch strike rate has fallen accordingly.

Lower first-pitch strike rates lead to better walk rates. Over Stewart's minor league career, his walk rate, batting average and HR rate showed great positive correlation.

Year

League

BB

PA

HR

BB%

AVG

AB/HR

2003

Rook

29

257

10

11.3%

.317

22.4

2004

A

66

581

30

11.4%

.319

16.8

2005

Adv A

52

499

17

10.4%

.274

25.6

2006

AA

50

528

10

9.5%

.268

46.2

2007

AAA

49

474

15

10.3%

.304

27.6

2008

AAA

34

298

19

11.4%

.304

13.5

Notice how as his walk rate fell, his batting average and HR rate fell as well. Let's look more closely at his batting average as a function of his walk rate.

This best fit line gives us the most accurate illustration possible of the effect Stewart's walk rate had on his batting average in the minors, and clearly there is a strong positive correlation between the two.

Given Stewart's wildly erratic batting averages, GB%/LD% rates and BABIP in his short time with the Rockies, it's difficult to tell exactly what his trends are, however we can clearly see he has improved his plate discipline each year and that his walk rates have been increasing.

Despite the disappointing .228 average last season, his past tells us he should improve greatly from that.

In 2009, Stewart had a walk rate of 11.4 percent, a rate he achieved three times in the minors (11.3% in '03, 11.4% in '04, 11.4% in '08). Each time he maintained a batting average over .300.

Do I think Stewart will bat .300 for the Rockies in 2010? It's possible, but I wouldn't bet on it. I do think that with a little more luck and an improved LD%, Stewart should be able to bat at least .270.

Couple that with more playing time in light of Atkins' departure, his 30+ HR power, and the little speed he has, and Stewart clearly becomes a bargain in the 13th round.